Jokshan

Jok'shan (Heb. Yokshan', יָקשָׁן, narer; Sept. Ι᾿εζάν v.r. Ι᾿εξάν or Ι᾿εκσάν), the second son of Abraham and Keturah, whose sons Sheba and Dedan appear to have been the ancestors of the Sabaeans and Dedanites, that peopled a part of Arabia Felix (Ge 25:2-3; 1Ch 1:32-33). B.C. cir. 2020. "If the Keturahites stretched across the desert from the head of the Arabian to that of the Persian Gulf, SEE DEDAN, then we must suppose that Jokshan returned westwards to the trans-Jordanic country, where are placed the settlements of his sons, or at least the chief of their settlements, for a wide spread of these tribes seems to be indicated in the passages in the Bible which make mention of them. The writings of the Arabs are rarely of use in the case of Keturahite tribes, whom they seem to confound with Ishmaelites in one common appellation. They mention a dialect of Jokshan (Yakish, who is Yokshan, as having been formerly spoken near 'Aden and El-Jened, in Southern Arabia: Yakit's Moajam,

cited in the Zeitschrift d. Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellschaft, 8, 600-1; 10, 30-1); but that Midianites penetrated so far into the peninsula we hold to be highly improbable" (Smith). "Knobel (Genes. p. 188) suggests that the name Jokshan may have passed into Kashan (קשׁן), and that his descendants were the Cassanitoe (κασσανῖται) of Ptolemy (6, 7, 6) arid Steph. Byzant. (s.v.), the Casandres (Κασανδρεῖς) of Agatharchides (p. 6, ed. Huds.), the Gasandres (Γασανδρεῖς) of Diod. Sic. (3, 44), and the Casani or Gasani of Pliny (Hist. Nat. 6, 32), who dwelt by the Red Sea, to the south of the Cinaedocolpites, and extended to the most northern of the Joktanites." SEE ARABIA.